On the acquisition of distributivity in Yudja

• Main Author: Suzi Lima
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2017-06-01
• Series: Revista de Estudos da Linguagem
• Subjects: distributivity; Yudja; verbal reduplication; plural; bare nouns.
• Online Access: http://periodicos.letras.ufmg.br/index.php/relin/article/view/11358

This paper explores the acquisition of distributivity in Yudja (Tupi, Brazil) based on a study with children and adults. In this paper, we explore experimentally the hypothesis discussed in previous work (LIMA, 2008) that verbal reduplication is a pluractional marker (LASERSOHN, 2005) that also conveys distributivity. Two preference tasks were performed with 11 adults and 17 children. Adults’ results show that the interpretation of ambiguous sentences is affected by the form of the noun phrase (conjoined nouns, pluralized nouns or bare nouns). Children’s results suggest that they have an overall preference for a distributive interpretation of sentences regardless of the verb form and the NP type.